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Author Topic: The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook  (Read 27154 times)

Benoist

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« on: January 23, 2013, 01:00:14 PM »
Bedrock Brendan posted his interview of Monte Cook on his blog.

I thought we could have a discussion thread about it here, if you have any comment, insights, whatever.

The part that stuck out for me:

Quote
BD: You launched the A+ campaign (a one-month commitment to stay positive) back in July. In an interview around that time, you also mentioned the problem of some gamers not accepting the tastes of others as valid.

I can certainly remember gamers being passionate since I started playing in the 80s, but it does seem like gamer’s opinions are a lot more intense and hostile lately. How do we, as a gaming community, preserve constructive debate and discussion as we tone down the rhetoric? Where is the line between constructive and destructive criticism?


MC: Here's my rather harsh viewpoint on this. There has always been a lot of thoughtful discussion about RPGs. It's just that now, with the Internet, that discussion is being done in public rather than in small, self-selective groups. In the 80s and early 90s, these discussions were located in APAs, in game stores, in game company meeting rooms, or around game tables. Those older, closed, venues were self-selective, so people who didn't gel with the others weren't welcomed back in.

In the open arena, for every one person interested in thoughtful discussion, there seems to be at least one person interested simply in putting forth an agenda. In other words, many people just don't understand the difference between examining something critically and tearing it apart. They don't understand the difference between analysis and advocacy. "Discussing rpgs" becomes "proving that the RPG I enjoy is the best."

When I started playing RPGs, and even for the first 10 years of my professional career, sure, there were discussions about whether Traveller was better than MegaTraveller, or whether the Hero System was better than GURPS. There wasn't the idea, though, that if you played one game, people who played other games were playing RPGs wrong.

That kind of strange, defensive way of looking at the hobby is relatively new. Frighteningly, it creates the kind of self-destructive toxicity that may one day destroy tabletop RPGs. If that happens, people will say that computer games finally killed tabletop games, but you, I, and a few others will know that's not true. Tabletop RPGs weren't murdered. They committed suicide.
But it doesn't have to be that way.

This toxic atmosphere among gamers started about 15 years ago, and it's escalated since then. It worsened even more a few years ago, when some professionals in the industry believed that they should get involved in those kinds of discussions.  They used this kind of "you're playing games wrong" sort of approach to try to sell their games (or the new edition of their existing game).

I don't know how to push us back from this brink, but I know that a lot of people quietly want to see it happen. They've all but dropped out of the endless edition wars and old school versus storygame labeling nonsense, so you rarely hear from them, but I think there's an eager part of the RPG audience that just wants to get back to having fun the way they want to have fun without worrying about what someone else has to say about their game or play style.

I think that smart publishers will start catering to them more and more. If they don't, those level-headed gamers will eventually get tired and fade away. All we'll be left with are the argumentative assholes, and I don't want to design games for assholes.

flyerfan1991

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2013, 01:08:42 PM »
Quote
That kind of strange, defensive way of looking at the hobby is relatively new. Frighteningly, it creates the kind of self-destructive toxicity that may one day destroy tabletop RPGs. If that happens, people will say that computer games finally killed tabletop games, but you, I, and a few others will know that's not true. Tabletop RPGs weren't murdered. They committed suicide.


This reminds me of the toxic atmosphere in MMOs these days.  It seems that nothing is really immune to this sort of behavior.

Drohem

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2013, 01:13:11 PM »
Yeah, that part stuck out to me as well.  Also, the part where he talked about how 3e D&D being tactics orientated lead to combat-encounters mindset in both the players and publishing.

danbuter

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2013, 01:13:51 PM »
A lot of this stuff on the internet really just stays on the internet. I've known a terrible forum troll who was actually a lot of fun and very easygoing at the game store. He just trolled for fun. It was what he did instead of watching TV. Posters and rpg companies who take these guys too seriously are just falling into the trap.
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Benoist

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2013, 01:14:29 PM »
Personally, I was wondering if something like discussions about story-games and trad RPGs and the like even registered on the radar of people like Mike Mearls, Monte Cook and the people "from the Seattle scene" in general (Paizo etc). That quote I pulled from the interview basically tells me that they in fact do (the 'old school versus storygame' part) - it's just that these guys think it's a bunch of toxic bullshit.

Bedrockbrendan

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2013, 01:17:54 PM »
Quote from: flyerfan1991;621011
This reminds me of the toxic atmosphere in MMOs these days.  It seems that nothing is really immune to this sort of behavior.


I don't play MMOs but friends who do have told me stories about how bad it is (apparently both in the forums and on the actual games).

1989

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2013, 01:24:53 PM »
I like the part where he said that 3e basically made people play with miniatures, and 3.5/4e taking that and making it moreso.

3e killed RPGs.

2e was the last great D&D.

Future Villain Band

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2013, 01:25:31 PM »
The real issue, from my standpoint, is that the blood and volume of these kinds of dogmatic arguments drown out the very real discussion that could be going on.  No matter where you go, there's usually about a dozen posters who have some valuable insight into running games, this design philosophy or that mechanical issue, but they rarely seem to have the kind of time on their hands that the people interested in no-holds-barred argument do.  

I almost think the answer is to veer away from public discussion at all, and go toward either epistolary discussions displayed for the public, or podcasts, or maybe blog interactions, where you can select participants and screen for the kind of choleric interactions that cause so much trouble.  I know that the most interesting stuff I've been seeing lately has been either in podcast form -- Ken Hite and Robin Law's podcasts, or the Unspeakable Oath podcast -- or in interviews, rather than forum discussions.  There are exceptions, but forums seem to be of more and more limited utility, which seems to be a shame since they're unbeatable for general, public interaction.

Novastar

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2013, 01:57:00 PM »
That's because to a lot of people on the internet, it's more important to "win" an argument, than to learn from it.

Which, admittingly, is human nature. ;)
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One Horse Town

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2013, 01:58:53 PM »
Quote from: Drohem;621012
Yeah, that part stuck out to me as well.  Also, the part where he talked about how 3e D&D being tactics orientated lead to combat-encounters mindset in both the players and publishing.


It's a bit of a strange thing for him to say considering he was front and centre in designing it.

flyerfan1991

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2013, 02:09:44 PM »
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;621017
I don't play MMOs but friends who do have told me stories about how bad it is (apparently both in the forums and on the actual games).


Yeah, it's gotten progressively worse over the past two years, ever since WoW started bleeding subs due to Cataclysm.  But Bioware's Star Wars The Old Republic fanned the flames too because EA overhyped it for what it was and made the resulting backlash worse.

Dimitrios

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #11 on: January 23, 2013, 02:19:30 PM »
Quote from: One Horse Town;621038
It's a bit of a strange thing for him to say considering he was front and centre in designing it.


I think some of the 3e designers were surprised by the directions it ultimately went in.

Simlasa

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #12 on: January 23, 2013, 02:19:59 PM »
Quote
That kind of strange, defensive way of looking at the hobby is relatively new.
I dunno... I remember things getting pretty damn shouty back in High School. I remember an ongoing dust up over one group's insistence that our group was 'doing it wrong' because we didn't level up nearly as quickly as their group did. It came close to blows on one occasion that featured our resident hotheads turning beet red in the face.
Plenty of feuds like that back in the day. It weren't all singing and dancing.
It's easier to find a lot of folks to fight with these days but also easier to build a little echochamber where you only hear opinions you agree with.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2013, 02:54:01 PM by Simlasa »

T. Foster

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #13 on: January 23, 2013, 02:28:34 PM »
It feels to me like he's pining for the groupthink days of the 90s when "everyone agreed" that, for instance, White Wolf was the model of rpg-progress in both system (dice-pools) and release strategy (fluff, splat, railroads, novel tie-ins) because "everyone" was actually a couple dozen "rpg professionals" (folks like Mike Stackpole: see recent thread here with relevant quotes) kibbitzing at GenCon and the GAMA trade show and nobody else had a voice. I don't think he's so much lamenting people having opinions about the "right" and "wrong" ways to do rpgs as that his and his friends' opinions on those matters are no longer the only ones the count - that we're actually telling them what we do and don't like and not just trusting their "professional" opinions about what we should like (whatever shiny new hotness they're shoveling out) and not like (70s/80s-style A/D&D).
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David Johansen

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The Bedrock Blog's interview of Monte Cook
« Reply #14 on: January 23, 2013, 02:42:23 PM »
hmmm 15 years puts it right around the fall of TSR and WotC's acquisition.  I'd like to suggest that the real problem is that D&D narrowed its appeal.  That D&D's real strength is that you can play it successfully with or without miniatures, with or without an involved story line, as a board game or a wargame, with preplanned adventures and without them.

I've believed for a very long time (as many here can probably recall...) that the problem really began when WotC started thinking of game design in terms of product design.  They're not alone, it's what ruined Warhammer too.

But for D&D it ment a focus on maps and tiles and miniatures needed to be supported in the rules and the structure needed to be designed to allow constant expansion and a bit of an arms race.

So yeah, I basically Blame Monty and Ryan for most of the hostility in the gaming community.
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